Enterprise Asset Management: More than just Plant & Equipment Maintenance

Today's industrial manufacturing environment is more competitive than ever. To stay ahead of the curve, companies are implementing lean strategies to optimize capacity, increase output, improve quality and lower  costs. QAD Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) is one of the many driving forces behind the idea of the "Perfect Lean Market."

Plant and Equipment Maintenance can only go so far in keeping your plant running smoothly. A complete asset lifecycle management approach must be taken in order to truly increase production capacity and efficiency. To gauge your current enterprise asset performance, contemplate the following:

• Is Return on Assets a key metric for your enterprise?
• How are you currently tracking and managing capital expenditures?
• Do you have standardized asset and maintenance best practices across multiple sites?
• What percentage of downtime is related to preventive vs. reactive maintenance?
• Can you calculate maintenance spend as a percentage of asset replacement value?
• Has unplanned equipment downtime impacted your ability to meet customer demand?
• What percentage of your working capital budget is tied up in indirect inventory?

By providing fast answers to these questions, QAD can help your enterprise lower costs, increase revenue and optimize assets utilization. QAD EAM provides the tools you need to address all of your plant maintenance, capital project, MRO inventory, and indirect purchasing requirements and challenges.

Increasing asset utilization, lowering scrap/rework and ensuring your plants run smoothly at high capacity is what QAD EAM is specifically designed to do. Capital projects are delivered on time and on budget. Unplanned production downtime is minimized. Critical spare parts and MRO supplies are available when needed. Indirect inventory levels are reduced, and MRO suppliers are more accountable as well as efficient. In short, return on investment for QAD is fast, typically between 6 and 12 months.

Approximately 24 percent of current QAD EAM users are in the industrial sector. These users can quickly view interactive graphs and concise reports covering 36 industry standard key performance indicators (KPIs). By clicking on hyperlinks, each KPI can be drilled down multiple levels, all the way to source documents and transactions. The dashboard and reporting capabilities of QAD EAM are incredibly valuable for today's often-stretched, industrial manufacturing manager.

To learn more about how QAD EAM can help significantly improve your industrial manufacturing operations, please contact Bo Hagler at bgh@qad.com.